I just wanted to give a short update on my recent travel to Kenya. A lot of people have written to me with concerns on my tweets about the coffee quality  in Kenya not being as high as last year. I might have tweeted about it a little early as we are hearing now that better coffees are coming in to the mills. But, I will still state that there was very few lots that could match the high quality we saw last year. We even brought our one year old coffees from Tekangu and Ndumberi to cup side by side the new crop coffees and to be honest they cupped better than most of the lots on that particular table.

Still, we did find some fantastic coffees on our trip, especially one lot from Tekangu and one lot from the western part of Kenya which up until now has been a neglected area for coffee connoisseurs. I went on a trip to Eldoret and Mt. Elgon, which is on the boarder of Uganda, together with Kennedy Keya from Dormans and Paul Geshos from Mecca in Sydney and we did see a lot of potential in the area. CMS has already set up a mill in Eldoret to get more of these coffees into the market and to separate the better lots for customers like ourselves. We did cup 2 spectacular lots from Mt. Elgon and decided to buy one of them. I can’t wait to start selling it in 3 months time. More info on that later.

Now, back to the topic. We did see very little coffee coming out of Kenya in the 2010/11 crop. This was due to the bad weather resulting in very little flowers on the coffee trees, hence less coffee on the trees. However it did rain a lot during the expansion stage of the coffee cherries, so the little coffee that was on the trees got a lot of water and nutrients. That is probably why the quality of the coffee that was available last year was very good. I remember coming back with over 15 samples that were all spectacular last year, whereas this year we came home with around 5.

This year the crop was almost 3 times bigger. Which in itself did create some problems during harvest as the harvest was short and drying capacity in many co-operatives was too small due to lack of drying tables.

Morten, from our new sister company Nordic Approach, was in Kenya during the harvest and could report that there was a lot of rain during harvest that also created problems with drying capacity. We did taste a lot of baggy and mouldy coffees this year, which has been rare for my last 4 years visiting. Ernest, the cupper at Central Kenya Coffee Mills suspected the bagginess to come from packing coffee in bags when the moisture content in the beans was still too high. We know that coffee easily gets mouldy if it is not dried efficiently, so it makes sense when you hear the weather has not been on our side.

Another problem Morten reported was that there was a lot of Coffee Berry Disease during the 2011/12 crop. The cherries that were delivered to a lot of Co-operatives were of mixed quality, hence compromising the cup quality. There was also a bumper crop which resulted in more green and unripe cherries being delivered together with the ripe coffee.

So, there are several reasons why the majority of the coffees we tasted in Kenya is not as good as last year. The 2010/11 crop was an exceptional year for quality in Kenya, but the crop was small and that is not great for the income of the farmers. It does not mean there is not great coffees to be  found in Kenya this year. We did find some spectacular coffees during our visit, it was just a bit harder to find them.

We have 2 new coffees on sale this week.
A coffee from the Bwayi co-operative in Burundi, bought on the trial Cup of Excellence last year.

Flavour description:
Flavours of citrus, coffee flower and ripe cranberries.
Mineraly and slim mouthfeel.
Lively citric and slight lactic acidity.
Short refreshing finish.

The other coffee is a Barazilian  natural processed organic coffee from Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza from our friends Marcos and Felipe in Mococa, Sao Paulo

Flavour description:
Flavours of berries, nuts and milk chocolate.
Hints of flowers on the nose.
Berry-like acidity with low intensity. Creamy mouthfeel.
Lingering sweet finish.

Both coffees are available on our Webshop.

Unfortunately due to more traveling buying coffee, we do not have a lot of capacity to hold courses. Therefore there will only be a limited amount of courses in 2012.

The courses until August 2012 is held on the following dates:

• 15th of February at 17.00
• 27th of March at 17.00
• 29th of May at 17.00

The only way to sign up for a course is to buy a ticket in our web shop.

After a week long trip in Sidama and Yirga Chefe together with Morten Wennersgaard from Nordic Approach and Kennedy Keya from Dormans we did a little video interview, reflecting on Ethiopian coffee.

We are already expecting some fantastic coffees from Ethiopia and I will be going once again in January to cup through samples in order to get more coffees.

The Kenyan coffee harvest is just ending and we will be going to Kenya in January to taste this years harvest. In the meantime, while we are waiting for the new crop to arrive, I thought I would publish a video I filmed during the harvest in 2010. Hope you like it.

Merry Christmas from Erik, Tim, Amanda, Ida, Stine, Steph, Arnaud & Tim.

During Christmas & New Year, we’ll have the following opening hours :

23rd December : 8.30 – 17.00

24th – 26th December : CLOSED

27th – 30th December : 10.00 – 17.00

31st December : 10.00 – 15.00

1st January : CLOSED

Normal opening hours from the 2nd January

It gives us great please to introduce the people of Copenhagen to Tim Wendelboe coffee, as we will now be supplying Europa 1989 with filter coffee. Europa 1989, an institution in Copenhagen, has historically been very close to speciality coffee; spawning 3 World Barista Champions and a World Aeropress Champion, and now they have decided to step up their coffee service.

Currently, Europa will be using El Puente of Caballero as their filter offering. They have refocused their efforts to provide their customers with this delicious coffee from Honduras – you can read more about Caballero here. They will also be offering their customers 250g bags for retail purchase and the coffee offering will change throughout the year.

We are very excited to be able to serve our coffee in our favourite cafe in Copenhagen. So, if you are in Copenhagen visit Europa – and have the best brunch Denmark has to offer.

We have changed a lot of coffees this week.

First of all it is a pleasure to be able to sell Mr. Fabio Caballero’s coffee from Finca Santa Isabel. We have decided that this is our Christmas special lot as we only have around 300kg of this coffee.

We have also changed the following coffees:

• New TW Espresso – now a new lot from the Caballeros from their farm Los Cipreses.

• A New El Puente lot from the Caballeros is replacing the old one. This new lot is not traditionally fermented to remove the mucilage but has been processed with an aqua pulper. The coffee is even cleaner and crisper than the previous one.

• A new lot with Bourbon coffee  from Nacimiento is replacing the previous Catuaì lot. The Bourbon is picked on the 7th of March and has a lot of juicy blueberry flavors.

Due to limited capacity during weekends we have decided to open up our cupping room during Saturdays and Sundays for brewing black coffee to our guests. This way we are able to serve those of you who only want a black coffee while visiting our store. We know how frustrating it is to stand in line sometimes and hopefully our cupping room brew bar will help things move a bit quicker.

The brew bar will only be open during weekends and we will be serving our full Aeropress menu. In addition you will be able to pay for whole bean coffee, books, etc. Of course we invite you also to come and hang out to ask us questions. The Cupping room was made to teach our customers about coffee, and most likely the person working there will have time to answer and help you become a better home barista.

If you want your cappuccino and latte, you still need to order them in our espresso bar, but hopefully the line will not be as long as before.

The Brew bar will be open for the first time on Saturday the  3rd and Sunday the 4th of December from around 12 o’clock. We will be serving some new lots from both the Caballero family and a new Bourbon from Nacimiento.

It’s winter in Norway and therefore we have adjusted our opening hours a little bit.
From Monday 31st of October our opening hours will be the following:

Monday – Friday: 8.30 to 17.00
Saturday & Sunday: 11.00 – 17.00